It’s an information superhighway that speeds up interactions between a large, diverse population of individuals. It allows individuals who may be widely separated to communicate and help each other out. But it also allows them to commit new forms of crime.

No, we’re not talking about the internet, we’re talking about fungi. While mushrooms might be the most familiar part of a fungus, most of their bodies are made up of a mass of thin threads, known as a mycelium. We now know that these threads act as a kind of underground internet, linking the roots of different plants. That tree in your garden is probably hooked up to a bush several metres away, thanks to mycelia.

The more we learn about these underground networks, the more our ideas about plants have to change. They aren’t just sitting there quietly growing. By linking to the fungal network they can help out their neighbours by sharing nutrients and information – or sabotage unwelcome plants by spreading toxic chemicals through the network. This “wood wide web”, it turns out, even has its own version of cybercrime.

Around 90% of land plants are in mutually-beneficial relationships with fungi. The 19th-century German biologist Albert Bernard Frank coined the word “mycorrhiza” to describe these partnerships, in which the fungus colonises the roots of the plant.

Fungi have been called ‘Earth’s natural internet’

In mycorrhizal associations, plants provide fungi with food in the form of carbohydrates. In exchange, the fungi help the plants suck up water, and provide nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen, via their mycelia. Since the 1960s, it has been clear that mycorrhizae help individual plants to grow.

Fungal networks also boost their host plants’ immune systems. That’s because, when a fungus colonises the roots of a plant, it triggers the production of defense-related chemicals. These make later immune system responses quicker and more efficient, a phenomenon called “priming”. Simply plugging in to mycelial networks makes plants more resistant to disease.

But that’s not all. We now know that mycorrhizae also connect plants that may be widely separated. Fungus expert Paul Stamets called them “Earth’s natural internet” in a 2008 TED talk. He first had the idea in the 1970s when he was studying fungi using an electron microscope. Stamets noticed similarities between mycelia and ARPANET, the US Department of Defense’s early version of the internet.

It has taken decades to piece together what the fungal internet can do. Back in 1997, Suzanne Simard of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver found one of the first pieces of evidence. She showed that Douglas fir and paper birch trees can transfer carbon between them via mycelia. Others have since shown that plants can exchange nitrogen and phosphorus as well, by the same route.

These plants are not really individuals

Simard now believes large trees help out small, younger ones using the fungal internet. Without this help, she thinks many seedlings wouldn’t survive. In the 1997 study, seedlings in the shade – which are likely to be short of food – got more carbon from donor trees.

“These plants are not really individuals in the sense that Darwin thought they were individuals competing for survival of the fittest,” says Simard in the 2011 documentary Do Trees Communicate? “In fact they are interacting with each other, trying to help each other survive.”

However, it is controversial how useful these nutrient transfers really are. “We certainly know it happens, but what is less clear is the extent to which it happens,” says Lynne Boddy of Cardiff University in the UK.

The thorns on the stem of this raspberry plant, serve as a mechanical defense against herbivory.

While that argument rages on, other researchers have found evidence that plants can go one better, and communicate through the mycelia. In 2010, Ren Sen Zeng of South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou found that when plants are attached by harmful fungi, they release chemical signals into the mycelia that warn their neighbours.

Tomato plants can ‘eavesdrop’ on defense responses

Zeng’s team grew pairs of tomato plants in pots. Some of the plants were allowed to form mycorrhizae.

Once the fungal networks had formed, the leaves of one plant in each pair were sprayed with Alternaria solani, a fungus that causes early blight disease. Air-tight plastic bags were used to prevent any above-ground chemical signalling between the plants.

After 65 hours, Zeng tried to infect the second plant in each pair. He found they were much less likely to get blight, and had significantly lower levels of damage when they did, if they had mycelia.

Johnson found that broad bean seedlings that were not themselves under attack by aphids, but were connected to those that were via fungal mycelia, activated their anti-aphid chemical defenses. Those without mycelia did not.

“Some form of signalling was going on between these plants about herbivory by aphids, and those signals were being transported through mycorrhizal mycelial networks,” says Johnson.

But just like the human internet, the fungal internet has a dark side. Our internet undermines privacy and facilitates serious crime – and frequently, allows computer viruses to spread. In the same way, plants’ fungal connections mean they are never truly alone, and that malevolent neighbours can harm them.

For one thing, some plants steal from each other using the internet. There are plants that don’t have chlorophyll, so unlike most plants they cannot produce their own energy through photosynthesis. Some of these plants, such as the phantom orchid, get the carbon they need from nearby trees, via the mycelia of fungi that both are connected to.

That might not sound too bad. However, plant cybercrime can be much more sinister than a bit of petty theft.

Ants, Aphids, Kennel, Leaf, Macro

Plants have to compete with their neighbours for resources like water and light. As part of that battle, some release chemicals that harm their rivals.

This “allelopathy” is quite common in trees, including acacias, sugarberries, American sycamores and several species of Eucalyptus. They release substances that either reduce the chances of other plants becoming established nearby, or reduce the spread of microbes around their roots.

Sceptical scientists doubt that allelopathy helps these unfriendly plants much. Surely, they say, the harmful chemicals would be absorbed by soil, or broken down by microbes, before they could travel far.

But maybe plants can get around this problem, by harnessing underground fungal networks that cover greater distances. In 2011, chemical ecologist Kathryn Morris and her colleagues set out to test this theory.

Morris, formerly Barto, grew golden marigolds in containers with mycorrhizal fungi. The pots contained cylinders surrounded by a mesh, with holes small enough to keep roots out but large enough to let in mycelia. Half of these cylinders were turned regularly to stop fungal networks growing in them.

The team tested the soil in the cylinders for two compounds made by the marigolds, which can slow the growth of other plants and kill nematode worms. In the cylinders where the fungi were allowed to grow, levels of the two compounds were 179% and 278% higher than in cylinders without fungi. That suggests the mycelia really did transport the toxins.

The team then grew lettuce seedlings in the soil from both sets of containers. After 25 days, those grown in the more toxin-rich soil weighed 40% less than those in soil isolated from the mycelia. “These experiments show the fungal networks can transport these chemicals in high enough concentrations to affect plant growth,” says Morris, who is now based at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

In response, some have argued that the chemicals might not work as well outside the lab. So Michaela Achatz of the Berlin Free University in Germany and her colleagues looked for a similar effect in the wild.

One of the best-studied examples of allelopathy is the American black walnut tree. It inhibits the growth of many plants, including staples like potatoes and cucumbers, by releasing a chemical called jugalone from its leaves and roots.

Achatz and her team placed pots around walnut trees, some of which fungal networks could penetrate. Those pots contained almost four times more jugalone than pots that were rotated to keep out fungal connections. The roots of tomato seedlings planted in the jugalone-rich soil weighed on average 36% less.

As a result of this growing body of evidence, many biologists have started using the term “wood wide web” to describe the communications services that fungi provide to plants and other organisms.

“These fungal networks make communication between plants, including those of different species, faster, and more effective,” says Morris. “We don’t think about it because we can usually only see what is above ground. But most of the plants you can see are connected below ground, not directly through their roots but via their mycelial connections.”

The fungal internet exemplifies one of the great lessons of ecology: seemingly separate organisms are often connected, and may depend on each other. “Ecologists have known for some time that organisms are more interconnected and interdependent,” says Boddy. The wood wide web seems to be a crucial part of how these connections form.

“We are Life, in human form. Descendants of the stars and galaxies, children of the oceans and forests, creative expressions of Nature. As much a part of this planet as the rivers, trees, mountains and butterflies.

As more and more of us wake up to that deeper sense of identity we will be more easily able to transcend old thought patterns and beliefs. Observing Nature’s Systems closely, studying her ways, we can re-write and delete old programming.

To truly bring an end to the destructiveness of humanity- to really transform the world- a deeper wisdom has to first arise from within. We must “be the change” as Gandhi put it. We have to free ourselves first, transform our ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.

Then take the wisdom of our wholeness and apply it to everything we say and do, to all fields of human activity. Economics, entertainment, education, law, medicine, transportation, energy technologies- they all can (and must) be transformed.

We are not the solitary individuals we have believed ourselves to be. We are expressions of Universal life, Children of our Galaxy. We are the “leaves of grass” Walt Whitman spoke of – the Awakening voices of Eden, instruments of the great turning.

“We are Life, in human form. Descendants of the stars and galaxies, children of the oceans and forests, creative expressions of Nature. As much a part of this planet as the rivers, trees, mountains and butterflies.”

For thousands of years people in Western cultures have been wrestling with the illusions we’ve spun from our dualistic mindsets and beliefs. It’s like we’ve been dreaming a shared nightmare together, grounded in the mechanistic ways our society has been organized, rooted in how we live and think.

Across the centuries, the very foundation of our so-called “Civilization” has been based on ideas of separation and superiority- men above, women below, Kings above, peasants below, humans above, Nature below, etc. Walls of separation in our hearts and minds, a sense of sin and abandonment, believing that our entire species was “thrown out of Eden.”

With dualistic “ego” logical thinking came an emphasis on time, our consciousnesses locked into mental projections of a feared or desired future, an imagined and idealized history.

When lost in these projections we become less aware of the magical nature of each moment, blind to the beauty, value and mystery of the HERE and NOW. This is how schools teach our children to think and feel, how our ancestors were dazed and hypnotized.

From this mindset grew Civilized man’s mad circus of history, the hostile cultures of race and nationalism as identity, religion as truth, militarism as method, materialism and acquisition of wealth as the organizing goals of our institutions, the unquestioned values guiding our way of life.

It manifested with the rise of wealth obsessed empires seeking power and dominance. Dualistic thinking led to the Witch Hunts during the Renaissance, to Europeans coming to conquer the “New World” – thinking themselves superior to the Natives, stealing their land. Then going to Africa where they kidnaped and enslaved the people, dragging them across the oceans.

Over the centuries reductionistic thinking has given rise to all our most difficult problems- to racism, sexism, nationalism, slavery, human trafficking, organized crime, alcoholism, drug abuse, obesity, prostitution, genocide and all our wars.

For thousands of years now, individual artists, poets, prophets and sages have been trying to help us wake up from our delusions. From Jesus to Buddha to Lao Tsu, from Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet” to Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” Whitman & Blake’s poems, Van Gogh’s paintings and forward thru time to the “Wizard of Oz,” ” Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” and James Cameron’s “Avatar”…

There was a great creative burst of realization in the 1960s, but still the spirit crushing institutions, selfish lifestyles and unquestioned mechanistic assumptions of the past continue to exert a powerful hypnotic force.

With the rise of new technologies and industrialization our consumer lifestyles have overpowered the rivers, mountains and forests that surround us. Over the last hundred years we have been destroying Nature’s ecosystems at an astounding rate.

Why has it been so difficult for humans to change?

In part, I think, it is because the “Civilized” Matrix will do whatever it can to avoid a shutdown. Our dominant institutions are designed to maintain control, to defend, expand and perpetuate their existence. Like the immune system of a body, attacking these systems directly only strengthens them, leads to hostility and violence.

Mostly however, I believe that we have not changed because too many of us are still hypnotized. Primarily identifying our sense of self with names, career, race, religion, gender, political perspective or nationality. Seeking pleasurable experiences, wealth, status and material possessions; mistakenly believing that these will bring us happiness and that the only way to solve complex problems is to “defeat the opposition.”

What most of us have failed to see is that we are not these social and cultural roles we imagine ourselves to be.

We are Life, in human form. Descendants of the stars and galaxies, children of the oceans and forests, creative expressions of Nature. As much a part of this planet as the rivers, trees, mountains and butterflies.

As more and more of us wake up to that deeper sense of identity we will be more easily able to transcend old thought patterns and beliefs. Observing Nature’s Systems closely, studying her ways, we can re-write and delete old programming.

To truly bring an end to the destructiveness of humanity- to really transform the world- a deeper wisdom has to first arise from within. We must “be the change” as Gandhi put it. We have to free ourselves first, transform our ways of thinking, feeling and behaving.

Then take the wisdom of our wholeness and apply it to everything we say and do, to all fields of human activity. Economics, entertainment, education, law, medicine, transportation, energy technologies- they all can (and must) be transformed.

We are not the solitary individuals we have believed ourselves to be. We are expressions of Universal life, Children of our Galaxy. We are the “leaves of grass” Walt Whitman spoke of – the Awakening voices of Eden, instruments of the great turning.

Nature’s Agents of Transformation- The Global Butterfly Effect.

~Christopher Chase~

“You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here… Keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world.” ~ Max Ehrmann (Desiderata, 1927)

“Be as simple as you can be; you will be astonished to see how uncomplicated and happy your life can become.” ~Paramahansa Yogananda

“People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one’s perception of reality.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

“The Earth is alive and contains the knowledge you seek. It is your consciousness that determines what it reveals. How to access this knowledge? And where are the keys to open it and make it yours? The Earth speaks. Love her, honor and respect her and she will reveal her secrets.” —Barbara Marciniak

“You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.” ~Eckhart Tolle

“Systems thinking has a certain simplicity and elegance to it — basically, a shift from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network… To deal with nonlinear systems requires a change of perspective from objects to relationships, from measuring to mapping, and this is why visual thinking becomes important.” ~Fritjof Capra

I recently had the opportunity to interview Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics, The Turning Point & most recently The Systems View of Life (with Pier Luigi Luisi). Last December, Dr. Capra published a new essay on the relationship between Science & Spirituality, where he describes the central focus and theme of his work being “the fundamental change of world view, or change of paradigms, that is now [occurring in the] sciences and in society; the unfolding of a new vision of reality, and the social implications of this cultural transformation.”

In the following interview we discussed a wide range of topics, including the current U.S. election, systems thinking, spirituality, health care, ecology, mysticism, 1960’s culture, and a new course he’ll be teaching online, beginning this April. ~Christopher Chase, March 3, 2016

Thank you for giving your time for this interview. I’d be curious to know what your thoughts are on the current election in the United States. Have you been following the U.S. election and do you have an opinion about the candidates?

My feeling has been for a long time that nothing in American politics will change until the pervasive corruption that is built into the system is addressed. I had very high hopes in President Obama, and he has done many good things, but he fell short of our expectations because he was unable to free himself from the ubiquitous, institutionalized corruption. For example, his health, economic, and climate policies were significantly restricted by the bribes (“campaign contributions”) he received from the health insurance, Wall-street, and fossil-fuel corporations, respectively.

Now, Bernie Sanders is the only politician who addresses this issue publicly and persistently, and I believe that this is the reason why he has such a strong resonance, especially among young people. I don’t care which label people use to characterize him. What matters is that he alone is the candidate for “the 99%.” Robert Reich put it well: “Hillary Clinton is the most qualified candidate for the political system we have, but Bernie Sanders is most qualified for the system we need.”

I guess the big question is whether Americans are ready for more transformational change?You live in California now, but were born in Austria and lived for many years in other European nations. Are there some specific social, economic or environmental policies you have observed outside the States that you feel Americans would benefit from implementing or revisiting?

Healthcare would be the obvious example. It is well known that universal healthcare is offered today as a basic right by most European countries, and that those countries save money and keep people healthier. When I grew up in Austria, I never had to pay for a doctor or a hospital.

Now, this does not mean that private insurance does not exist in those countries. Most people who are well off have supplementary private health insurance. As so-called “private patients” they get preferential treatment (special appointments instead of having to wait at the doctor’s office, more luxurious hospital rooms, etc.), but the medical care is the same, and it is free, i.e. paid collectively by the tax payers. This is an ethical issue, and it is a scandal that the United States, with all its wealth, doers not offer universal health care to its citizens as a basic human right.

Yes, I very much agree, and hope that changes soon. By the way, as a scientist you began with an interest in physics but then moved towards systems theories, which span and connect all the sciences. How did your focus change?

My work in physics was more than an “interest,” as I spent 20 years doing research in theoretical high-energy physics (roughly 1965-85). My move toward the life sciences had to do with my parallel work as a science writer. When I realized the broader implications of the “new physics” for society at large, I soon saw that the problems I had become interested in — health, management, economics, social justice, ecology, and so on — all had to do with life, with individual living organisms, social systems, and ecosystems.

I then spent the next thirty years developing a conceptual framework that integrates four dimensions of life: the biological, the cognitive, the social, and the ecological dimension. This framework is a grand synthesis of a new systemic conception of life that is now emerging in science.

I published my synthesis, as it evolved over the years, in several books, the last one being “The Systems View of Life,” coauthored with Pier Luigi Luisi (professor of biochemistry at the University of Rome) and published by Cambridge University Press. I also taught my synthesis in various courses and seminars, and I am going to teach the full-fledged version for the first time in an online course (“Capra Course”) consisting of 12 lectures and an ongoing discussion forum.

That sounds exciting. When will your course be taught?

The first Capra Course will be launched in April this year and will go on for 12 weeks. Up to now about 120 people have enrolled and we expect the course to be full by the end of March. I am imposing a limit of 200 participants in order to guarantee high-quality discussions. For more information and to see a five-minute trailer, please visit the course website (here).

Many systems theories seem rather complicated, and yet systems thinking has a cohesion and simplicity to it. I believe that its basically a form of visual thinking, using our imagination to accurately represent systems and relationships in the world around us. Do you think so also?

You are right, systems thinking has a certain simplicity and elegance to it, even though it requires a radical shift of perspective — basically, a shift from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network. Now, a network is inherently nonlinear, and this nonlinearity is THE key characteristic of complex systems. To deal with nonlinear systems requires a change of perspective from objects to relationships, from measuring to mapping, and this is why visual thinking becomes important.

Taoist philosophy seems to be a form of systems thinking, and many indigenous tribal worldviews seem to be as well. Wisdom and compassion seem to flow naturally with such views. Do you agree?

I agree, and this is what attracted me to Taoism in the 1970s when I wrote “The Tao of Physics.” Now, you would think that seeing the world in terms of relationships would imply compassionate behavior toward other living beings. Indeed, this is true in the philosophical school of deep ecology, which is related to spirituality. But those values — in other words, ethics — do not necessarily follow from the systems view of life.

Many people are able to think in terms of relationships at a more superficial level. This is why I always emphasize values and ethics explicitly. In fact, in our textbook, Luisi and I wrote a whole chapter on science and spirituality, and I also dedicate a special lecture to this theme in the Capra Course.

The Dalai Lama has made similar observations. It always amazes me when people profess to be practicing their religion but support warfare, the killing of fellow human beings. For thousands of years this has happened over and over. Why do you think this paradox exists, that spiritual teachings of love are so often bypassed or ignored?

To understand this conundrum, it is really important to clearly distinguish between spirituality and religion. Spirituality is a way of being grounded in a certain experience of reality that is independent of cultural and historical contexts. Religion is the organized attempt to understand spiritual experience, to interpret it with words and concepts, and to use this interpretation as the source of moral guidelines for the religious community. In this endeavor religious leaders and their institutions, unfortunately, have often become excessively interested in power, even to the extent of losing the religion’s spiritual core.

Yes, that’s a very important distinction to make. You’ve written a lot about how the new vision of science provides us with an understanding of the Universe that is much more congruent with spiritual teachings and mystical experiences, as compared with earlier mechanistic views. The story of how our Universe came into being and evolved is amazing. Knowing that the entire Cosmos emerged in a flash, for a moment smaller than a tea cup, how can that be described as anything short of miraculous?

Spiritual experience — the direct, non-intellectual experience of reality in moments of heightened aliveness — is known as a mystical experience because it is an encounter with mystery. Spiritual teachers throughout the ages have insisted that the experience of a profound sense of connectedness, of belonging to the cosmos as a whole, which is the central characteristic of mystical experience, is ineffable — that is, incapable of being adequately expressed in words or concepts — and they often describe it as being accompanied by a deep sense of awe and wonder together with a feeling of great humility.

The fundamental interconnectedness of all phenomena is a dominant theme also in modern science, and many of our great scientists have expressed their sense of awe and wonder when faced with the mystery that lies beyond the limits of their theories. Albert Einstein, for one, repeatedly expressed these feelings, as in the following celebrated passage, which I quote in the course:

“The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science…the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny.”

Einstein talked of the fabric of space/time, and yet many mystics have said there is no time, there is only an endlessly shape-shifting NOW. Joseph Campbell and Alan Watts often talked about this, Watts explaining that what we call time is simply our measurement of the cyclic movements of an ever changing Universe. Which view do you more agree with?

I was greatly influenced by Alan Watts. Especially while writing “The Tao of Physics,” his writings were a great inspiration. Regarding time, the most beautiful statement I know is one by the mathematician Hermann Minkowski, the creator of the space-time structure on which Einstein built his special theory of relativity. Here is how Minkowsi presented it to his colleagues in Germany in 1908:

“The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.”

Physicist David Bohm said, “the difficulty is this fragmentation. All thought is broken up into bits. Like this nation, this country, this industry, this profession and so on… And they can’t meet. That comes about because thought has developed traditionally in a way such that it claims not to be effecting anything but just telling you the way things are. Therefore, people cannot see that they are creating a problem and then apparently trying to solve it… Wholeness is a kind of attitude or approach to the whole of life. If we can have a coherent approach to reality then reality will respond coherently to us.” I would expect you agree?

I do agree with David Bohm, whom I knew quite well. In my earlier books I wrote a lot about the origins of this fragmentation in the Cartesian split between mind and matter. In my textbook and in the course I show how systems science has now overcome this separation and is leading us to a unified view of mind, matter, and life.

Recently, I was listening to a really nice cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock.” The lyrics describe how “we are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon.” It seems like a unified vision of humans as a part of the Universe rose into Western awareness back in the 1960’s. Why do you think it is taking so long for this holistic and ecological view to stabilize and for human cultures to become more aligned with the wisdom of Nature?

I love Joni Mitchell, one of the icons of the Sixties. But the line about carbon was added later. The original lyrics go: “We are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” I have often wondered why, after the hippies of the Sixties, the feminist and ecology movements of the Seventies, and the Green parties of the Eighties, we did not continue on that trajectory.

I have come to believe that the information technology revolution, in addition to connecting people worldwide like never before, brought with it a new materialism and a new capitalism that took 10-20 years to unfold before the counter movements set in.

In my view, our values today are about where they were around 1989, but today we have a powerful global civil society, a global network of NGOs that promote systemic thinking and the values of human dignity and ecological sustainability.

What are your thoughts about the role of the Internet at this moment in history? Do you get your news from mainstream sources or alternative online media outlets?

I use the Internet daily in my work and for informing myself about politics, cultural issues, sport, entertainment, and so on. I do read newspapers (e.g. The Guardian, UK; Le Monde Diplomatique, The New York Review of Books), but I get most of my information from the Internet via Common Dreams, Democracy Now, The Daily Optimist, and several other news websites. However, I am not active in social media.

Could you share your thoughts on spiritual practices and why they are important? I’ve been meditating for about 30 years and feel that it helps to quiet the linguistic conceptual mind. Our awareness is then more open to sensory information, less attached to beliefs. There is a deeper feeling of connectedness. I have friends who are athletes or practice arts that say something similar can happen when they move their bodies or are playing music. Einstein was a violinist and said that he often thought in music. Have you maintained a spiritual practice or practiced an art, and what role do you feel these play in transforming your consciousness?

The main thesis of my first book, “The Tao of Physics,” is that the approaches of physicists and mystics, even though they seem at first quite different, share some important characteristics. To begin with, their method is thoroughly empirical. Physicists derive their knowledge from experiments; mystics from meditative insights. Both are observations, and in both fields these observations are acknowledged as the only source of knowledge.

A further important similarity is the fact that their observations take place in realms that are inaccessible to the ordinary senses. In modern physics, these are the realms of the atomic and subatomic world; in mysticism, they are non-ordinary states of consciousness in which the everyday sensory world is transcended. In both cases, access to these non-ordinary levels of experience is possible only after long years of training within a rigorous discipline.

Now, it is possible to have spiritual, or mystical, experiences spontaneously — in a powerful experience of art, in sports, in sexual experiences, and in other highly charged emotional states. My experience of the cosmic dance of subatomic particles, which I described in the opening pages of “The Tao of Physics,” was such a spontaneous experience. For most of us, however, these spontaneous experiences are few and far between. To increase their frequency generally requires rigorous training in a spiritual discipline.

Like you, I have had many such experiences in meditation. For over forty years, on and off, I have practiced Tai Ji, the Taoist “meditation in motion.“ For the first ten years, in the 1970s, this was a rigorous discipline for me. I would begin each day with a set of stretching exercises, followed by a couple of Tai Ji sets (in the style known as Guang Ping Yang) and an hour of Chinese calligraphy practice.

These forms of meditation all embody the same Taoist principles. Moreover, during those years my Tai Ji master was also my doctor, keeping me healthy and in balance with Chinese herbs and acupuncture. So, the ancient Chinese wisdom was really a central guiding principle for me during that decade.

Wonderful. It sounds like your spiritual practice has had a powerful influence on the unified view of life you’ve developed and have been sharing with the world through your writing and teaching. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview.

The first edition of Capra Course, Fritjof Capra’s new on-line course based on The Systems View of Life will launch in April 2016. For more information please go to http://www.capracourse.net

“I seem, like everything else, to be a center, a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself.. Each one of us, not only human beings but every leaf, every weed, exists in the way it does, only because everything else around it does. The individual and the universe are inseparable.” ~Alan Watts~

“People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one’s perception of reality.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh~

“The greatest revolution of our time is in the way we see the world. The mechanistic paradigm underlying the Industrial Growth Society gives way to the realization that we belong to a living, self-organizing cosmos.” ~Joanna Macy

“I like to experience the universe as one harmonious whole. Every cell has life. Matter, too, has life; it is energy solidified. The tree outside is life… The whole of nature is life… The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can’t grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.” ~ Albert Einstein~

“What you do not know is that the entire universe is your body… You may say you have two bodies: the personal and the universal. The personal comes and goes, the universal is always with you. The entire creation is your universal body. You are so blinded by what is personal, that you do not see the universal. This blindness will not end by itself – it must be undone skilfully and deliberately. When all illusions are understood and abandoned, you reach the error-free and perfect state in which all distinctions between the personal and the universal are no more…” ~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“At the very heart of the change of paradigms from the mechanistic to the systemic view of life, we find a fundamental change of metaphors: from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network. This change has many facets… Evolution is no longer seen as a competitive struggle for existence, but rather as a cooperative dance in which creativity and the constant emergence of novelty are the driving forces.” ~Fritjof Capra

“Stop acting so small. You are the Universe in ecstatic motion.” ~Rumi~

Like this:

“Man and nature are connected in a fragile web of life. We must pay attention to the world around us and respect it. The human family is just one voice in a global chorus of many. We have the great gift of choice, to destroy or repair…”

Like this:

“…from out of the sexual organ of every woman there came another cord, with another woman or man at the end of each one, and all of that, millions and millions of times over, turned into an enormous tree, a tree formed from the infinity of bodies, a tree whose branches reached to the sky.”